American Swagger: The 2019 Lincoln Continental Gets Suicide Doors
When Lincoln introduced the current Continental a couple years back, the general consensus was that it was a nice luxury car, but it lacked the swagger of earlier Lincolns, particularly the suicide doors that made the large, sleek Continentals of the 1960s such iconic machines.
It seems Lincoln has gotten the memo, because for 2019 the company is introducing a special version of the Continental to celebrate the car’s 80th anniversary—and suicide doors are back, baby.
Called the Lincoln Continental Coach Door Edition, the new version is a lot more than just putting new doors on the existing model. In fact, the cars are actually re-engineered by Lincoln before being shipped to an outfit called Cabot Coach Builders to complete the transformation.
It’s there that the cars will get a six inch stretch, which brings the rear legroom up to a truly executive level, with a flowing pass through center console and of course those suicide—or coach style—doors that open from the center via electric motors.
In keeping with the 80th anniversary celebration, Lincoln is planning to build just 80 examples of the Coach Door Edition for the 2019 model year, and given that exclusivity, it’s easy to imagine the cars selling out quickly. Mechanically, it will be the same as the standard Continentals, with a 400hp twin turbocharged EcoBoost V6 under the hood.
With the ever increasing popularity of SUVs, traditional luxury sedans like the Lincoln Continental are an endangered species, and it's cool to see Lincoln standing out from the crowd and looking to its past to bring back some that classic American swagger to this iconic nameplate.
